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THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release March 9, 2000

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT

Today, we reached another historic landmark in our fiscal turnaround. For the first time in seventy years, the U.S. Treasury Department completed a "debt buyback." This buy-back of debt is a striking reminder of the extraordinary progress we have made in putting America's fiscal house in order. In the last seven years, we moved from the largest deficit in history to the largest surplus in history.

America is now on track to pay down nearly $300 billion in debt by the end of this year and to be debt-free by 2013. In this new era of surpluses, these "debt buybacks" will help us continue to pay down the debt, save money for American taxpayers, and lift the burden of interest payments off our children and grandchildren.

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